


Six Months

by AceMcshane



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, The Vault (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 08:16:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14208987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceMcshane/pseuds/AceMcshane
Summary: Character study - how Missy handled six months alone in the vault. Boredom, loneliness, nightmares and the self control of keeping herself there. Twissy mentions.





	Six Months

After two weeks she started pacing. She knew exactly how many steps it took to circle the vault, and the sound of her heels tapping against the floor began to plague her. So she skipped, varying her pace to make the sound less monotonous.

When that grew tiresome, she challenged herself to see how long she could play her piano for without pausing, ending up with her hands feeling painful and stiff. The ache would last for days and would mean she couldn't play without pain, so she sat, memorizing sheet music instead. 

At four weeks she wondered if he was testing her. It felt cruel to her - to leave her alone with the most basic of food supplies and no-one to talk to in a isolated locked room which had no inkling of the outside world. Without Nardole supplying her with sugary sweets everything became bland and her energy flagged.

Waiting was beyond boring - it was worrisome too.

She sung, danced despite having no music,  took the toaster apart and built a surprisingly good hand held weapon, which she hid under her bed, cursing herself all the while for losing the ability to make toast. 

She pulled her weapon back out from under her bed, along with several other devices crafted using the microwave and some microscopic quantum particles she had meticulously extracted from the walls that confined her. 

Now if only she could get that particle accelerator - then her creation could really fulfil its potential. She didn't intend to kill anyone, or even really maim them. She just felt her mind growing numb, and she had always been proud of her innovation and creativity. Not using her talents was one of the hardest parts of her situation. 

When six weeks had passed she sat and cried. She contemplated whether he was coming back at all. She cried all day long,  then when she was exhausted she slept - for a long time. Not bothering to really get up. No-one was coming to check on her so there seemed little point in appearances. Sometimes she slept on the floor with her pillow, just for a change. The cool hard surface of the floor against her body was not pleasant, but it was at least a change in sensation. 

Two more weeks past and a feeling of despair took hold. She stared at the door, thinking of all the ways she could just open it and leave. Just go. To hell with him, leaving her alone for so long. 

The days blended into each other after that and she began to wonder if he had gone and got himself killed. Regenerated and forgotten  about her or got himself properly killed. Both concepts left her in tears that did not subside for days and left her feeling too tired to get up from the chair to even adjust the heater which was set to maximum. 

She missed him. She would settle for a tiresome debate about morality, or his endless stories, intended she assumed, to illustrate what goodness actually was. She missed the sound of his voice, even when the words were lost on her because she was only pretending to listen. The frown he got whenever she beat him at chess (her winning streak was impressive). 

_ She just missed him.  _

She was, after all, there for him - for  _ them. _ For their friendship. 

At some point, as the days and weeks merged into one indistinguishable blob of time, she began to have nightmares. 

Her own actions haunting her whenever she tried to rest. They were all there in her head, her nameless victims. She stopped sleeping,  thankful that she didn't need anywhere near as much as humans did. She contemplated briefly how the Doctor ever got anything done when the humans he loved to surround himself with had to stop and spend hours at a time every single day asleep. Eventually, she collapsed through sheer exhaustion onto her bed. 

She woke two hours later, crying. Sitting in bed with her head in her hands unable to get their faces out of her head. 

The girl who adored the Doctor - so wanted to impress him, travel with him. He liked her. She really was a good scientist for a human. He was so horrified when he realised she was dead. Deliciously so. Missy had taken great pleasure in the reaction she got from him. 

Baby leakage on his jacket. That was what she had said to Clara. That part wasn't true, but she had heard him on his phone when he took a break from pointing his gun at her. 

She was a parent once too. 

Every time she tried to sleep, more and more memories haunted her. So many people, time and time again. She thought that if only she could name them, they might not plague her so much. But she had wiped them out like they were meaningless. 

One morning - or at least she assumed it was morning, she woke from a fitful nightmare and ran to the door. Her head felt like it would implode - too full of things she could not change. Lives upon lives that she had taken - her memories swarming in her mind, plaguing her and refusing to give her the briefest moment of peace. 

Her head hurt and she felt dizzy. She vaguely remembered banging her head against the wall at some point in the night and feeling her blood becoming sticky in her hair. 

She stood at the closed door and screamed.

It was five and a half months when she opened the door. Driven by hunger when the food supply was getting low. She really didn't want to, but starving to death was not part of the deal. She had rationed the food supplies  carefully but the Doctor clearly hadn't planned for her to be self sufficient for such a long expanse of time. 

It had become clear that he really had messed up collosally somehow. 

She opened the door after six minutes of manipulating the mechanisms. As she pulled it open she felt an excited anticipation, along with a small wave of regret. She hoped for the night air, or simply to breathe in something different. The vault hadn't been designed to sustain life, so the Doctor had worked fast to make a robust environmental system. It worked, and she had no concerns that it might fail - but despite this she had created a backup power source which nobody seemed to have ever noticed. 

When she took a deep breath however, the air felt stale. She could tell she wasn't far from the outside, but the surrounding area was damp and dusty - much like a basement. 

She was disappointed. If she was going to make such a bold move as to open the door she felt she really should have been rewarded with brisk outdoor air, scents and sensations to show her that she was amidst a different world to her self contained prison. 

She didn't step further though. She would wait. Until she really had no choice. This was after all, her decision as much as his. And he  _ did _ know that she could get out. He knew her talents well and would not underestimate her skills. 

She remained at the open door, exasperated and hungry. If there had just been a vending machine within sight then that wouldn't count as having left. She could relinquish it of is it's contents and have something vaguely nutritional if she was lucky, then go back inside with her stash and not be forced to step outside again for a little while. 

Seeing nothing of any use she sighed and  closed the door. She decided to give him four more weeks. By that time the food supply would have been exhausted and she would have no choice but to leave. 

What bothered her the most was that her hand was being forced. She wasn't prepared to die in there, there was no point to that. She wanted to stay, but not like that. Not so utterly alone and with each day filled with uncertainty. 

She returned to her constant nightmares and hoped that when the Doctor came back -  _ and he would come back _ , that she would start to sleep again.

Days later, she heard his voice at the door and almost cried with the flood of relief that came. She fought a valiant battle to compose herself before he entered. 

She steeled herself so that he wouldn't see the immense relief in her eyes, sat at her piano, and began to play. 

  
  



End file.
